This just in...

Via Cycle South Dakota:

Viagra may be placed on the banned drugs list.

Yep, that's right. Apparently it has a performance benefit (besides the obvious one) in that it permits greater blood flow and therefore greater oxygen carrying capacity. Follow the link to the full article on WWOS.COM.AU

I know. I know. There's a strong temptation to indulge in some cheap humor over this. It's hard, very hard (oh damn!) to resist. I mean, if we simply rise to every sophomoric joke about those little blue pills, we richly deserve some stiff punishment. So I beg of you, all of you reading this, to refrain from making fun of something as serious as abusing Viagra in cycling. It's so wrong. Most of us know the satisfaction that derives from pushing to the very limit when climbing a steep hill, our breath rasping in and out, and forcing the pedals around again and again and again as we try to reach the pinnacle, knowing that the sense of anticipation is best felt and most intense just before that climactic moment. We collapse exhausted across the handlebars, drenched in sweat, deflated, and satisfied at making yet another conquest. Who needs Viagra for that?

Gotta go see what the wife's doing. Later.

My thoughts on the Landis case...

OK, everyone knows the Landis decision has been released. According to the panel, he was guilty of doping during the 2006 Tour de France. I wrote some time ago that I believed they'd find him guilty. This is not an I-told-you-so because I was hoping to be proved wrong. The lab committed grave errors and the panel recognized that. But I won't cover the same ground Radio Freddy did in Belgium Knee Warmers. Please read his post.

Anyone who's seen a police procedural like 'Law and Order' or 'CSI' knows that the standards of evidence in a criminal prosecution are quite strict. In the Landis case, the standards were much less stringent. In fact, had he been tried in a court of law, the case would most likely have been dismissed.

And, that, ladies and gentlemen, is what I'm proposing. The testing standards and chain of custody should be as strict as those in any court of law, if only to protect the integrity of the testing process, the defendant's rights, and our wavering faith in the anti-doping process. And to enforce that high standard, any athlete should have recourse to the court system in any doping controversy. If the anti-doping agencies have the power to ruin an athlete's reputation and destroy him financially, that athlete should have the right to bring charges against the agency, in effect, forcing them to act within the law. WADA has quasi-legal authority now because in order to participate in his sport, a professional athlete must submit to their testing regimen. The balance of power is too heavily weighted to the prosecution side.

My prediction...

The doping charges against Floyd Landis will be upheld by the arbitration panel, even if one of the lab technicians were to come forward and state that they mixed grape Kool-aid into his samples. The World Anti-Doping Agency cannot afford to lose a high profile case such as this, particularly since the Beijing Olympics are only a year away. Billions of dollars are at stake. Billions.

Remember the golden rule - those with the gold make the rules. Floyd will be steamrollered. He will be crushed because he stands in the way of all those billions. His innocence or guilt are irrelevant to the money interests.

A week from now, perhaps I'll be proved wrong. I certainly hope so.

LA Times Doping Story: Part 2

Honestly, this is what news journalism should be about, not celebrity worship, sex and drugs, or an endless parade of murder and mayhem. The Times is doing a public service.....Ed

PRESUMED GUILTY

Athletes see doping case appeals as futile exercise

The arbitration system is flawed, with a tilt toward accusers. Accidental and trivial cases result in harsh penalties.

By Michael A. Hiltzik, Times Staff Writer
December 11, 2006

Second of two parts

A panel of international sports arbitrators hearing a doping case against Olympic sprinter Torri Edwards went out of their way to sing her praises.

They described Edwards, then a 27-year-old USC graduate, as "a diligent and hardworking athlete" who had "conducted herself with honesty, integrity and character."

They acknowledged that her purported breach of doping regulations was entirely unintentional, caused by the obscure additive nikethamide in a couple of otherwise innocent glucose tablets she took at an exhibition race in Martinique.

"She has not sought to gain any improper advantage or to 'cheat' in any way," they wrote in August 2004.

But the arbitrators, while expressing "unease" about the rules and acknowledging their "harshness," still found Edwards guilty of doping. Her sanction: a two-year suspension from international competition.

The punishment was indistinguishable from what could have been imposed on an athlete caught deliberately injecting steroids. It wiped out Edwards' eligibility for the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens.

Full story at: http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-me-doping11dec11,0,2983494.story?coll=la-headlines-sports

Athlete's Unbeatable Foe

Here's an interesting story from the LA Times about the fundamental unfairness of the World Anti-Doping Agency. Yes, there are several anecdotes regarding top athletes, including Floyd Landis. But Dick Pound's overbearing ego is readily apparent too. When WADA is the sole judge, jury, and prosecutor in a doping case, it's absolutely contrary to any sense of fair play, particularly when an accused and convicted athlete has no recourse to our court system..........Ed

Excerpts follow:

Anti-doping authorities serve as prosecutor, judge and jury. The innocent often pay a high price.

By Michael A. Hiltzik, Times Staff Writer
December 10, 2006

The worldwide sports anti-doping program, created to fight performanceenhancing drug use in international athletics, imposes severe punishments for accidental or technical infractions, relies at times on disputed scientific evidence and resists outside scrutiny, a Times investigation has found.

Elite athletes have been barred from the Olympics, forced to relinquish medals, titles or prize money and confronted with potentially career-ending suspensions after testing positive for a banned substance at such low concentrations it could have no detectable effect on performance, records show.

They have been sanctioned for steroid abuse after taking legal vitamins or nutritional supplements contaminated with trace amounts of the prohibited compounds. In some cases, the tainted supplements had been provided by trusted coaches or trainers.

The findings emerge from a Times examination of more than 250 anti-doping cases involving runners, cyclists, skiers, tennis players and competitors in dozens of other sports from around the world.



...Stringent anti-doping measures have become a fact of life for the thousands of athletes participating in national and international events since the creation of the World Anti-Doping Agency, or WADA, at an international sports conference in 1999. WADA's founding was prompted by a rash of doping scandals threatening the credibility of global sports.

What has evolved to protect competitive purity since then is a closed, quasi-judicial system without American-style checks and balances. Anti-doping authorities act as prosecutors, judge and jury, enforcing rules that they have written, punishing violations based on sometimes questionable scientific tests that they develop and certify themselves, while barring virtually all outside appeals or challenges.



...A test sample is typically divided into two vials, labeled "A" and "B." The "A" sample is the first to be tested. If it comes up positive for a banned substance, the athlete may demand a confirmation test of the "B" sample. If that is also positive, the code allows the agency to declare the athlete in violation of doping rules and impose a penalty ranging from a public warning to a lifetime ban. Generally, the athlete also is disqualified from the event at which the violation allegedly occurred.

An accused athlete's only recourse in the face of a doping charge is arbitration, under rules of evidence dictated by WADA and designed to give the authorities the benefit of all doubt.

In many countries, including the United States, athletes have no right to appeal an adverse arbitration ruling to the courts. In the vast majority of cases, including every case heard in the U.S., the arbitrators have upheld the violation.

Tests for banned substances may be performed only at one of the 34 labs around the world accredited by WADA. Athletes are not permitted to have their samples tested at any lab outside the agency's system. The rules also prohibit WADA labs from doing any tests in defense of an accused athlete.

WADA Chairman Richard W. Pound, 64, a Montreal lawyer, argues that the program must be so stringent and uncompromising to be effective against doping, which he calls "the biggest threat to sports."


"The less discretion there is in the finding of a doping offense, the better it is," he told The Times in an interview.

Pound, a former competitive swimmer who finished just out of medal contention at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, dismissed the notion that a significant number of doping cases are accidental or inadvertent; WADA policy states that every athlete is responsible for everything he or she ingests or applies to the body. In the case of adulterated supplements, he said, "If you didn't know what was in there, it's your own damn fault." In the rare cases that an athlete can be proved truly faultless, he added, the system is flexible enough to temper its penalties.

...Yet the international anti-doping program's own statistics cast some doubt on the concerns expressed by Pound and other officials about a sports world awash in drugs. Of USADA's thousands of tests per year, fewer than 0.5% have produced sanctions. Many of those were for prescription medications or substances with little or no performance-enhancing effect.

In 2005, for example, USADA conducted 8,175 tests and imposed sanctions on 20 athletes. Its testing program consumed $5.6 million that year, or 47% of a $12-million budget funded primarily by Congress.